Souvenir or theft: Is it ever OK to take a piece of your travels home?

From pilgrims pinching fragments of the True Cross to Grand Tour travellers half-inching Hellenic trinkets, trophy hunting and travel has a long and controversial history. With her new novel drawing on this theme, author Victoria Hislop explores the ethics of pilfering relics from foreign destinations

Victoria Hislop has written about the scourge of taking archaeological finds from ancient sites (Bill Waters)

The practice of taking something home from your travels is nothing new. Pilgrims returning from visits to the Holy Land brought with them small pieces of rock or clay from a sacred site, or water or oil that had been sanctified by contact with a saint’s body and put in a small phial. For these devout “tourists”, such objects would probably remain with them for the rest of their lives, and relics of actual holy bones were used as the basis to set up new churches. The ultimate “take home”, after its supposed discovery in the 4^th century, was a fragment of the “True” cross (the crucifix to which Jesus Christ had been nailed). Naturally there was money to be made from this and fakes abounded. They say that if all the pieces of the “cross” were put together, there would have been enough to build a ship.

In all eras, conquerors of other nations brought home “booty”. To steal another nation’s wealth and treasure made a victory over them even more impressive – and the conquest more humiliating for the loser.

From the 17^th century (and during the two hundred years that followed), the Grand Tour became an essential part of education for an aristocratic or wealthy gentleman. Inevitably these travellers wanted to take home physical reminders to display to their friends, objects that would prove their credentials as learned, cultured individuals. And the options were anything from ancient coins, paintings (often created for the “tourist”), architectural models of temples and treasures and, in many cases, original, full-sized sculptures and busts, the purchase of which was often legitimate.